Today, we will address the question we get almost on a daily basis; “Why do you deflate your tires and should I deflate mine?”

Deflating tires has a HUGE impact on your vehicle by improving the quality of your ride. It causes less wear on your components and adds better traction for your tires. Those are a couple of the advantages and it only takes you about 5-20 minutes depending on your deflating process and the device you use to deflate your tires (which we will talk about in a little bit).

Deflating your tires makes the tires softer and more pliable when it hits hard obstacles like rocks or uneven terrain. It expands the “grabbing” surface of your tire over obstacles that require traction to get over them. Also, expanding that “grabbing” surface of your tire, you can get a lot more traction over soft terrains, like beaches and sand dunes.

Overall, deflating your tires is one of the simplest and best off-road advantages you can achieve without any mods. Now that we talked about the benefits you can get from defeating your tires when off-roading. Let’s talk about how much to deflate your tires and a basic understanding of tire pressure.

We will use a 35" tire as an example. Depending on the kind of wheel you are running (Beadlock or non-Beadlock) your lowest recommended pressure will vary. We would not recommend going below 10psi on a non-Beadlock wheel, because your bead can actually pop out of its place and cause a different set of problems. On a dirt road, air down to 18-20psi for better ride quality. When on soft terrain, like a beach or somewhere like the Cinder Hills off-road area in Flagstaff, you would want to be somewhere around 15psi.

There are many ways to deflate your tires out there and it will ultimately come down to personal preference, and even though all rigs can benefit from deflating your tires when off-roading, today we are only going to talk about small to mid-size 4x4s. The main deflating devices we recommend are the following:

EZ Deflators (ARB, Currie, Teraflex, Etc)

Probably the quickest and our favorite deflator. These Deflators can deflate a 35" tire in a matter of seconds. We carry both versions of this style deflators. The analog version by ARB or Teraflex and the Digital version by Currie. Below, we added a video we did last year.

[embed]https://youtu.be/aqpktfIDWJY[/embed]

Coyote Automatic Deflators

Thes deflators have been around for a very long time. They were one of the best options out there before for people that were not in a rush. The beauty of these deflators is that all you have to do is install them on your valve steams pull the ring and let them do their thing. Once they reach their pre-set pressure, they will automatically stop. You need to pre-set them ahead of time and you can even drive slowly with these installed. The main problem with these is that you have to preset them ahead of time and you only have that one preset pressure to work with. These deflators take a few minutes to deflate your tires.

And, of course, after any airing down, there has to be airing up. Stay Tuned for our Airing Up Tech Note!

If you have. any questions about the airing down the process or what deflator would work the best for you. Stop by the shop anytime or give us a call (928) 227-2026